Here at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft has been kind enough to take us and a number of administrators of Featured Communities around to a series of labs helping get us a sneak peek at Windows Vista.

As an encore, Microsoft got us a bunch of VIP passes to Bill Gates' keynote address very close to the front row.  Alas, Las Vegas traffic conspired against the shuttle that we were all in and the seats were opened to others and we lost them.  But just when we thought we were going to be stuck in the nosebleed section, PowerUser.TV's Kristin Hatcher came up with another idea -- Hanging out at the Microsoft private suite which, quite unlike the auditorium, had food and drink. Great food and drink in fact.  Kristin was able to persaude Microsoft's community relations team (who have been awesome on this trip) into letting us watch the keynote from there. 

So many of us saw the keynote from the comfort of a quiet private suite eating shrimp, crab legs, and drinking margaritas.